Fox Tries To Shut Down Script-Sharing Websites

As the 2010 Black List – a collection of this year’s best unproduced screenplays, as decided by movie industry insiders – was released yesterday, movie studio 20th Century Fox was already doing its best to make sure that as many of those screenplays as possible would go unread by anyone outside of the industry. The studio is targeting filesharing sites such as Mediafire, which host PDF copies of the screenplays, to crack down on script piracy; the Hollywood Reporter has the news that cease and desist letters have been sent to sites, demanding that scripts are removed and threatening further legal action if they aren’t taken down in a timely manner (Mediafire’s scripts have already been taken down in response).

This isn’t the first move in Fox’s battle against script piracy; last month, the studio launched a lawsuit against writer Patricia McIlvaine for hosting scripts for existing movies and television shows on her site, claiming that her site “harm[ed] the fans who do not want their enjoyment of a movie or television show to be spoiled by knowing the story ahead of actually being able to watch it.”